Before last month’s Academy Awards ceremony, a timely Buzzfeed piece about the “Cool Girl” as a fixture in American popular culture made the rounds on social media. It should come as no surprise that Buzzfeed circulated an article to such commercial acclaim; the site is known for producing habit-forming, tongue-in-cheek content, yet, this piece in particular was an unconventional and refreshing departure from the site’s offbeat but somehow still mass-marketable material. It took an approachable, intellectual and unusually prolific stance about the world in which we live — and, in a rare move for Buzzfeed, included no quizzes, countdowns or cat videos.

In the piece, Anne Helen Peterson, a professor and PhD who examines, as she calls its, “celebrity gossip, academic style,” outlines the qualifications required of a young ingénue in order for her to be considered a quintessential “Cool Girl” of society. She traces four versions of the archetype in American cinema within the last century, beginning with Clara Bow, followed by Carole Lombard, Jane Fonda, and ending with Jennifer Lawrence.

Peterson poses the larger question about whether or not coolness can be separated from public perception. Is a Cool Girl only cool so long as an adoring world believes she is cool? Peterson suggests yes; after all, many think that coolness — a word that, by definition, implies that its possessor is of-the-moment — has an expiration date contingent on social approval, even if the person who embodies it seems not to care what others think.

“Cool” is inherently paradoxical in the public eye. The substance of a woman, which makes her unique and valuable in the first place, can remain the same or even improve, but her status as cool can change in an instant. On some level, every woman wants to be the “Cool Girl” of her own crowd, but she does not want to have to care about staying that way. Coolness seems to be a barometer of authenticity; women who are fundamentally and assuredly themselves are irresistible. At the outset, to be this way is not a negative aspiration, but it can become so when we equate coolness solely with the approval of others.

…to be this way is not a negative aspiration, but it can become so when we equate coolness solely with the approval of others.

Peterson portends that there is an unforeseen drawback to being so universally adored as a young, beautiful, talented, and famous woman. Cool Girl status is “ephemeral,” she says. In other words, it’s short-lived. One cannot remain indefinitely cool in the eyes of a fickle and demanding public. What’s more, one cannot remain a girl forever, either. It is a myth, a role, a performance that, in a non-calculating way, the Cool Girl has “subconsciously figured out what makes people like her, and she’s using it” in order to perpetuate her likeability and buying power. Peterson implores us all to consider if “this persona is truly ‘cool,’ or [if it] is a reflection of society’s unreasonable and contradictory expectations of women.” With that, we should also consider how much we let the celebrity scene influence what’s cool and acceptable in our own lives. What is the standard we’re setting for ourselves? Who’s dictating it?

The reality, Peterson seems to imply, is that we live in a society that forgets about a person — and the niche into which we fit her — just as quickly as it falls in love with her. Here, we have actresses who are rewarded for being quintessentially, unapologetically themselves, only to later have that privilege stripped from them when they begin to age, or when the public falls in love with someone cooler, cuter or more comical than they are. Where youth and novelty dominate public consciousness as the top feminine virtues, authenticity loses out and desperation can eventually ensue.

Though the majority of us are not actresses on the most public of stages, we may still fear the playing out of this desperation in the scope of our own lives. In the form of aging or feeling like we have lost influence in our careers, we can begin to live in a state of constant dread. The threat of irrelevance looms large in a fearful heart; when we overvalue society’s perception of us, we become emotionally subject to its whims and risk losing our self-worth. Truthfully, no one wants to peak or, worse still, to have peaked.

This is when we must separate our self-worth from what the world says (or doesn’t say) about us, and switch from aspiring to be cool to choosing to be confident. Though the subconscious aspiration of the Cool Girl — namely, to be and stay cool — might fail us, the attitude of the Cool Girl, when it is parsed out from the expectations of the public, can serve us well. When we lose cool as a cultural incentive and adopt it as an individual imperative, we can strive for it. It can then mean what we want it to, on our own terms.

Knowing you and doing you, like Bow, Lombard, Fonda, and Lawrence demonstrate, is a start.

How do you strive to develop confidence over temporary coolness? Is there a difference?

Images via Martha Galvan